The Farmer And The Snake
by WhiteLadyDragon
Summary: Five times Aina thought about Orochimaru, and the one time she did something about it. Based on my Tumblr roleplay threads with masshirohebi. One-sided OC/Orochimaru, slight Jiraiya/Orochimaru, mentioned one-sided OC/Tsunade. Rated M for violence, implied sexual content, alcohol use and dark themes.


**_DISCLAIMER!_** **Except for original character Aina, all featured or mentioned fictional entities are from Masashi Kishimoto's manga series** ** _Naruto_** **. This fan fiction is written purely for entertainment and generates no profit whatsoever.**

 **Based on the Tumblr roleplay threads between myself (super-kame-love) and my friend masshirohebi. No relation to my other Naruto fanfic, though it does feature the same OC, Aina.**

 ** _THE FARMER AND THE SNAKE_**

Once upon a time, Aina heard a story as a little girl about a farmer and a snake. Actually, she'd heard _several_ stories about farmers and snakes. They all had tragic endings, but each had a different plot leading to it.

In one story, a farmer saw a snake out in the cold and tried to save him by cradling him to his bosom, only for the snake to lethally bite him upon waking. As the farmer asked with his dying breath how the snake could do such a thing when he'd only meant to help him, the snake said that the farmer should have known better than to do it, by virtue of his being a snake.

In another, the snake lived in the farmer's house as pest control until he bit the farmer's son for stepping on him, whereupon the farmer retaliated by chopping off his tail with an axe. Though the farmer would later seek reconciliation, the snake would refuse it because neither of them could ever forget their mutual injuries.

In another still, the farmer let the snake live in a mound in his field and left him food every day, for which the snake would repay him with a gold coin each time. This naturally made the farmer and his family very rich over time, and then greedy. The son–either on his own volition or on instruction from his father, perhaps both–went to the mound one day and tried to kill the snake in hopes of finding the treasure it must have been hiding, only to once again fall victim to the snake's fangs. Again, the farmer would try to make peace, and again the snake would reject him, their trust broken beyond repair.

Then Aina, herself a farmer, grown up with bits and pieces of all these stories and more sewn to her soul like patches in a quilt, somehow found herself a snake and together they wrote a story of their own that she would not forget even when she wanted to. And all the stories in the world could not quite prepare her for it.

 **...**

The first time she thought about him was after she'd stumbled home from their first encounter, her throat burning with vomit and skin splattered with blood that mostly wasn't hers.

She'd met him like she might have met anyone else: out in the woods, looking for snakes to draw for her banner for her up-and-coming club. He'd come to her in the shape of a man, but one could tell his affinity for snakes just by looking at him: white skin shiny as scales, blazing eyes of gold accentuated by purple markings, long black hair that fanned out behind him like the hood of a cobra. His movements were fluid, like how a snake might move if it had limbs and could walk upright. He even had pointy teeth, and a name to match! Orochimaru. "Giant Snake." A man who practiced snake magic? Or a snake who could turn into a man?

Either way, rather than draw back in fear, she'd invited him to join her club. What happened next played out like a bizarre dream, before concluding in a nightmare. He hadn't forced her into anything; she'd followed him willingly into one of his burrows, unable to let go of her fascination with her new friend even as he had to go…or to let that man attack him.

In hindsight, maybe she shouldn't have followed him? But if she hadn't, would something else have happened, instead? Ever since that day at Teuchi's ramen stand, her neighbors had been treating her different.

She didn't want to be different. But she could not help it.

First she was an idiot. Now she was a _violent_ idiot.

And after 12 years of trying to atone through kindness and obedience, she had relapsed. She had killed someone, this time. She'd blacked out for the act itself but she had woken up again to see the knife wedged in their attacker's squirting throat. It would not be her last kill.

Mama was gone to be with Papa on the other side, Masa and Minori were tucked in, her clothes were soaking in baking soda in the basin outside, and she slumped under the stream of hot water in the shower for longer than she normally did, torn between scrubbing herself clean and keeping herself steady lest she collapse to the floor into a bawling heap of flesh and bone. He'd said many things, said that it didn't matter, people killed all the time for a living, including himself and her friends Anko, Shizune and Tsunade.

She didn't want to believe him. That wasn't what Mama and Papa had taught her. And yet…

She didn't sleep a wink that night, and the worst part was showing up for work the next day, continuing her routine like nothing had happened, like she didn't still smell the blood on her hands or see the image of the giant serpent devouring the corpse branded inside her eyelids. Either she was better at lying than she thought (though was it really lying if no one asked you about it?), or no one had cared enough to notice anything was amiss.

 _He came from this village, too. And he had to leave it. He seen what I done and ain't turned me away._

Maybe she had only been delaying the inevitable in staying here?

Maybe…she was _meant_ to meet him? Or not. Luck and fate were awfully hard to tell apart. With him, she didn't have to hide.

Even so, she kept this to herself and waited until she could get the chance to see him again. When that happened, she'd focus almost entirely on him and his problems. Forget about her own for a while.

As it turned out, he would need help, too. Whether he'd admit it or not.

 **...**

The second time she thought about him was after she'd stitched him up in her house. Some shinobi had caught Orochimaru in the graveyard, or so he'd told her. Actually, he hadn't had to say it; she'd figured it out from their last meeting in that exact same place. She'd thrown them off, but in doing so she'd confirmed everything she'd feared ever since she could first notice prejudice.

 _Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Can't even dress herself._

She clutched the sign so tightly in her hands that she almost ripped it. _Uzume wasn' no idiot when_ she _got naked. Can't be that much of an idiot if I managed to fool y'all._

It made it so much easier to put up the vacation sign over her door. To be safe, she put the number 5 for the number of days she would be unavailable while she waited for the water to boil for her tea. Quite frankly, even if she _wasn't_ hiding him from the authorities until he could leave on his own, she didn't feel like seeing anyone for a few days after what Sho had said.

Once she'd put up the sign, she peeked back in her (Mama and Papa's) room. She had bandaged and cleaned him up and given him the bed to sleep in for the night, and possibly the next one. While he wasn't sleeping yet, he did appear to be burning holes up into the ceiling. Was he irritated for getting into this mess, or too afraid of getting caught to sleep? Both?

 _He really should be sleepin'. Most healin's done while you sleep. I won' let nothin' happen to 'im._

 _Oh, it ain't fair what they done to 'im. He was jus' seein' his Mama-n-Papa. What's so wrong with that? It ain't right to keep folks away from their Mamas an' Papas, no matter what they done._

 _I wonder…he don' think I'm an idiot. Do he? He said he didn't. But he said I's naive. I don' know. I…reckon I kinda am._

Then a new thought sprung from the turned-up soil in her troubled mind, no bigger than a sprout but the kind of sprout she'd never seriously nurtured before.

 _What would he say if I asked if I could go live with 'im?_

 _O-oh, hold on, Kame! You can't jus' ask to move in with 'im! Well, you could, but should you? You wouldn' wanna be a bother. An'…an' this is your home. Been your home your whole life. You can't jus' leave it 'cause somebody said an awful thing about you…_

 _Then again…he mus' be lonely. He won' say so, but he is. I can tell._

 _An' lately it felt ain't much like home. Not since Mama…_

Even if she did have the nerve to ask it, he gently shook her from her thoughts with his own question: "What's the matter?"

He knew what was bothering her. He knew because they'd talked about it while she was stitching his wounds. No. He knew even _before_ he'd seen the tears filling her eyes. Because he was perceptive. He was intuitive. He was smart.

And she was an–

 _Idiot. Idiot. Idiot._

 _Can't be that much of an idiot if I can stitch, neither._

"Huh? Oh, um, jus'…checkin' up on ya." That wasn't a lie; she _was_ checking on him. She decided then to wait and see. It was unwise to make such drastic choices when angry or sad. Maybe it was only Sho who thought that about her? They couldn't _all_ possibly think of her that way, not after everything she'd done for them…

"I'm makin' tea. Lotus. You want some? I'll get you a straw." She'd been meaning to pour him a cup since seeing him at the graveyard. Yes. She could get through this. She could think of this as a kind of sleepover.

Even with the tea, she wouldn't sleep that night, either. She'd lose a lot of sleep over him.

 **...**

The third time she thought about him was after she saw him cry the first time.

It turned out that she _should_ have left the Leaf sooner. Somehow, in spite of her silence, they'd found out she'd been talking to Orochimaru. They called her a traitor and forced her to run. She hadn't meant to betray anyone. They hadn't bothered to ask for her side of the story. They never had.

If she'd left sooner, Masa would still be alive.

So she plunged into the rogue lifestyle as deeply as she could, for her own sake and Minori's. But she couldn't stay submerged in it all the time. As it turned out, neither could Orochimaru.

They were out in another seedy part of another jungle passed off as a town, and it had begun like any other night: Orochimaru would dominate the conversation with his razor-sharp tongue and eyes and ears, while she sat next to him in an awkward near-silence, expending energy just to process everything that was being said. She'd gotten much quieter since moving in with him, speaking mainly when she had to.

She had discovered in her time that there are some animals she could not speak to: fish, insects, and people.

Then he'd gotten up to go to the bathroom and never came back. Having no reason to stay at the table, she went back to check on him.

She discovered that perhaps he was at least one part human after all when she saw him struggling in front of a sink not to start crying, and failing. Aina had to briefly turn away lest his tears became her own. That had always been one of her many problems. It didn't matter why somebody was crying; she almost never looked at their tears without feeling tears well up in her eyes.

 _Oh no. Why's he cryin'? Did somebody say something he didn' like? Did he drink too much?_

His gold eyes had turned glassy as he caught her peeking at him from the door, almost like a snake's when it became due to shed its skin. She couldn't tell if the emotion flickering in them was anger or shame for having been caught in a moment of such weakness, but she stayed back by the door and offered her scarf so he could dry his eyes. The question dangled on her tongue like a ripening plum, but she picked it off before it could fall off her lips.

 _What's wrong?_

Not that she didn't want to know–she wanted to know most everything about him–but she had learned from prior experience that he didn't like being questioned about his feelings. Really, who did? Maybe there was no tangible reason for his tears that she could have fixed anyway? Maybe they were for many things that had happened too long ago to do anything about them?

 _I wish I coulda worked out a way for you an' Tsunade an' Jiraiya to be friends again. Then maybe you wouldn' be so sad._

Whatever was the matter, she watched him turn into a little white snake and slither out the window instead. Snakes didn't cry. Couldn't even if they wanted to. She met him outside with no one's notice and wound up carrying him around her neck like she used to do with Masa, her scarf fastened around her neck and her dark fluffy curls bouncing free to give him cover and warmth.

Just like in the story. With his little head resting against her pulse, it would only take a second for him to sink his venom-filled fangs through her tender terracotta skin and into her vein and she would barely be aware of it. Except, the snake did not bite, this time. Because he'd wanted to be up there. At least until they got to where they were going to.

Apart from the occasional hiss to slow down or stop, the journey back home (or at least the place that was called home for that month) was quiet. She managed to stave off her urge to speak her mind by remembering her own sadness and playing with one of her rocks. Papa's apatite.

One link of what had become, and what would continue to be, a long chain of small, strange brushes at intimacy.

But she could not fend off her desire to say more, to do more. Even as she closed her eyes that night, his watery eyes lit up her dreams.

And her nightmares.

 **...**

The fourth time she thought about him was after he'd been particularly awful to her.

Contrary to popular belief, she wasn't _that_ blind, not _that_ stupid. She knew how volatile and controlling and mean he could be, on the field and in the lab and everywhere in between. She'd seen him lash out at others, and even she wasn't safe from his cruelty.

Still, even with all that, she fell in love with him. For perhaps the same reasons she had fallen in love with the slug princess: because she was alone and weak and desperate and he was strong and beautiful and had all the answers for everything except his own sadness. Or so she'd thought at first.

Also contrary to popular belief, she had no delusions about his returning her feelings. She knew he would say no before she'd let it slip out. Snakes did not love anyone, especially not people as ugly and pathetic as she.

At least he was honest about it. After she'd made the mistake of confessing her love to Tsunade, she had stopped spending as much time with her with little explanation.

She was going to let it go until he threw it back in her face one night over a game and drinks. One minute she'd looked up from her glass of water into the dark smoky haze trying to process the dare tossed in his direction by a man across the table with his lips twisted in a smug smirk. The next, she and Orochimaru were face to face with his white lips on hers. The kiss landed on her like a snake bite: quick, light and just as venomous.

That had been her first kiss. Yes, maybe she was rather old for that to be true (barely 30 years) but it was true. One of the few things she'd still had control over in her life, and he'd taken that away from her while everyone laughed like he had just told the funniest joke in human history.

As usual, she was the last to get it.

He hadn't even wanted it.

His triumphant smile cut her like one of his scalpels straight through her chest, the laughter jabbing in her ears and skin like long, rusty nails. For a moment, she was a ghost. She existed; she had to exist or else she wouldn't have hurt this much. Just not to them.

 _How…could you? You didn' want it. I didn' say you could have it._

 _What'd I do to deserve that? If I's the one that got asked to kiss you, I wouldn'ta done it. I respect you. I always tried hard to respect you. How could you?_

 _So that's all I am to you, ain't I? That's all I am to everybody, ain't I? To you, to Kabuto, to all these folks. A joke._

 _Now I'm wonderin' why they drove you outta the Leaf. You might look different…but you're jus' like the rest of 'em._

Pushing the tears back in her eyes and the pieces of her broken heart back down her tightening throat, she pushed herself up out of her seat and shuffled for the door with a barely uttered request for pardon. She only went as far as the scarcely dressed tree outside underneath which to curl up into a ball. She couldn't go any farther than that. She had nowhere else to go.

The drinks kept pouring and Orochimaru spared only a passing glance over his shoulder before he took his turn in the game.

Had he done that on purpose? Or had he just been careless? No matter what he said after that, she would never know for sure. He'd gone back on his words too many times for her to believe him that easily anymore.

But the little things people did, or didn't do, always said the most.

 **...**

The fifth time she thought about him was after she helped him decimate the Leaf for the second time in his career. This was also the time she realized for sure that the Leaf had never been her home, and that Orochimaru was, as some would say, "full of shit."

He hadn't bothered to tell her about his rendezvous with Jiraiya when she'd come back to the bar and saw him missing. The Leaf ninjas were their enemies, that's what he always said. They had both killed some, _both_ of them. There was no way he'd go _sleep_ with one of them, even if it was a former teammate of his.

She should have figured a long time ago that others did not think like her, nor did she think like them. But forgive her for assuming the worst, as he'd taught her, when she'd rushed up those stairs to the inn and found him under the toad sage, naked and sweaty and pale skin marked with bites and flush with alcohol and sex.

Forgive her for grabbing Jiraiya by his wild white mane and tossing him to the wall, howling with fury and despair no matter how hotly the noise burned her skin. (She was lucky insofar as he was as drunk and dopey as Orochimaru.)

Forgive her for practically tearing down the building and alerting the patrolling jounin of their location.

Forgive her for being overpowered by them, for they were sober and she drunk in a different way than the other two.

Someone forgive her, for Orochimaru wouldn't. Their entrapment in the village jail was all _her_ fault. Not his. Never his. Not even her breakout from her restraints and her blubbering apologies could shake his grudge as she begged him to get on her back and let her sneak them out of here, to atone for her mistake.

"Atone for your missstake?" he hissed. "You sssay that as if I'm going to let you live once this is all over! I should have killed you a long time ago!"

Well, that settled it. Too terrified to set him completely free but too terrified to leave him there to answer for his crimes, Aina took him down from the wall and left him to break out of his own chakra restraints. And that, he did. With aplomb.

Aina saw him ravage the village from way out in the farmlands as an eight-headed and eight-tailed serpent, each of his white spiky heads blotting the sunrise and painting the village with its blood in spite of the best efforts of Tsunade and Jiraiya. They raged like the night before didn't even happen.

Just like in the stories. His true form? Was _any_ of this real?

Unable to look any longer, Aina knelt in front of the old plum tree where Mama and Papa and Masa rested, the only living thing left standing in the remains of her gardens. Surrounded by plums in varying states of decay and the sickly-sweet perfume of death, her salty brow touched the ground, for one moment the guilt and shame crushing her like a boulder rolling off the defaced Hokage Rock.

 _All that death an' destruction…over yonder…that_ is _my fault. I believed 'im. I shouldn'ta believed 'im. All he cares about is himself. Now he's off fightin' the same fellow he'd…him an' Tsunade both…all those men an' women' an' children're dyin' 'cause of me…who knows what he's gon' do to me next…whatever it is, maybe I deserve it…_

Of course, like all problems, she couldn't get away from this one forever. It followed her out there like a snake on the trail of a rabbit. Jiraiya and Tsunade, on the heads of Gamabunta and Katsuyu, bashed and splashed Orochimaru out into the farmlands as the snake grew sluggish with chakra depletion. They were getting closer, now. She knew because she felt the earth tremble under their weight, saw the pebbles bounce under their violent dance.

She had to leave again. She barely had time to say goodbye to her family. Minori, the last of her family, was still waiting for her back at the hideout. She'd tried to make the other Sound ninjas her family too, but they didn't want her. No one wanted her.

Then a shadow overtook her. Red, then white. Darkness enveloped her, wet and putrid like rotting flesh.

 **...**

He had saved her life. Even after all that talk of ending it, he had saved it instead. Snapped her up in one of his mouths as a crocodile might do for her baby when he could have very well swallowed her like a tiny mouse.

But… _why?_

Because he'd needed her to get him back to the hideout? Yes, that sounded logical. The most logical thing he did that night and that day.

Perhaps he'd done it to show her just what he could do to her if he only wanted?

Or could it be that he felt something for her after all? Not necessarily love–it was too cold and hollow and jagged and selfish–but some diseased rudiment of it.

Whatever his reason, her wait for capital punishment was met with a sullen silence, as he was confined to bed to restore his chakra reserves. Kabuto saved all his dirty looks for her, as if he still believed his master's condition was her fault. Was it? Did it matter?

Either way, Aina stopped in the hallway with a tea set and blinked at him when they passed each other. "Maybe you don' care to hear it, but I'll tell you anyway so's you know: I didn' make 'im turn into a giant snake. I's against it."

 _He was the idiot, this time. Not me._

Kabuto didn't answer, didn't even look back at her. Perhaps he was ignoring her? It didn't matter, now. But there was something else she wanted to say, to someone else.

She peeked into his room and waited for permission to enter. He was on his back staring unblinkingly at the cracks in the ceiling, his gold eyes dull and his expression blank. What could he be thinking now? Whatever it was, it wasn't hate, or anger, or even satisfaction at what he'd done to the Leaf. It was as if she was staring at one of his skin sheddings and the real Orochimaru was coiled up in one of the dark corners or perhaps under the bed, waiting for her to get close enough to strike.

Still, nothing happened.

Sighing, Aina stepped inside and headed first for the nightstand on his left (her right) to set down the tea.

"Orochimaru. I–I brought you some tea."

He didn't answer. He barely acknowledged her presence but the sheets kept rising and falling with his every breath. His long black hair, missing some of its sheen, fanned out on the pillow around his head like many snake heads.

"My…my Papa tol' me somethin' once…I don' know if you heard it before, but I think you oughta hear it now.

"Everybody…s'got a fight goin' on inside 'em. In you, in me, in every single person. Their good side, an' their evil side. They fight like two snakes, with the winner claimin' your soul."

No answer.

"The one snake lives in harmony with everything and don' take no offense when no offense was meant. He only fights when it's right, an' he does it in the right way. He's about truth, compassion, humility an' peace.

"The other snake…is full of anger. The smallest thing sends 'im in a fit of temper. He fights everybody all the time for no reason. His anger an' hatred are so great that he can't think right. It's a helpless anger that don' change nothin' but'll poison 'im eventually. He's about lies, malice, arrogance an' war.

"I…I ask Papa which of the snakes wins your soul. You know what he says?"

No answer.

"H-he say, 'The one you feed.'"

No answer.

"I didn' quite understand what he meant, then. But now…now I reckon I do. You an' me both done bad things. An' folks done bad things to us. B-but we can also do good things," she said as gently as she could, pouring him a steaming cup from the pot, a faint tremble in her hands to match the one in her ankles.

"We can choose. It ain't too late to choose different from what you have."

She never took her eyes off him. In fact, she wasn't even standing by his bedside, but rather next to the nightstand as she prepared his cup. Good gracious, was this how he planned to spend his immortal life? Alone and thoroughly miserable? The mere thought of this softened some of the anger she'd felt for him into pity. Even if it was in her nature to hate for long, he was too pathetic to waste the energy.

Still, she dared not move closer.

He must have noticed. Because finally, he gave an answer:

"You say that, yet you won't come nearer to me. I can hear the pot shaking in your hands as you pour the tea. Hn. Are you finally afraid of me? Took you long enough."

His chuckle was weak, hoarse and deep in his throat, his lips curled into a grim smile to show off his pointed teeth. His eyes, however, remained blank. Not a flicker of mirth could be found within them.

"And even if you are speaking the truth, I'm afraid it _is_ too late. Still, I suppose I should thank you for going out of your way to tell me that adorable tale."

Just like in the story.

Aina stuck a straw into the earthy green tea and spun the tray so the cup would be nearer to him. She pushed it closer to the side of the nightstand closer to him. He had working arms and he could sit up.

"Maybe I am? Or maybe I jus' been gettin' wiser an' I ain't used to the feelin'?" She didn't take her eyes off him even as she crept slowly backwards out of the room. All she had left to say to him was:

"Either way, be sure to drink your tea before it gets cold. Or don' drink it. It don' really matter no more."

 ** _THE END_**


End file.
